Russia's military said Thursday that its forces captured Ivanivka, a frontline village just 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the Kyiv-held transport hub of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine.
Pokrovsk lies on the intersection of a key road supplying Ukrainian troops and towns across the eastern front line and has long been a target for the Russian army.
In a daily briefing, the Russian Defense Ministry said its forces "liberated the village of Ivanovka" in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, using the Russian name for the village.
Russian forces have been inching toward Pokrovsk for months, taking a string of tiny villages in recent months as they seek to reach the outskirts of the city.
Moscow's advances in the east come as Ukraine mounts an unprecedented cross-border attack into Russia's Kursk region, claiming to have captured several dozen Russian villages.
A Ukrainian official told AFP over the weekend that the incursion so far had little effect on fighting in the east but that the "intensity of Russian attacks" had decreased slightly.
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